Quote

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

John Ruskin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Ruskin
Age: 80 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 8
Died: 1900
Died: January 20
Aesthetician
Architect
Art Critic
Art Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Kata Phusin
Rŏsŭkʻin
J. Ruskin
John Rosukin
Jon Rasukin
Dzhon Rëskin
Ruskin
Strong
Miserable
Weak
Among
Rich
Class
Working
Idleness
Poor
Idle
Happy
Wicked

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.
John Ruskin
Image
To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.
John Ruskin
Image
To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
John Ruskin
Image
Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.
John Ruskin
Image
There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.
John Ruskin
Image
One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said Let him touch it. So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.
John Ruskin
Image
Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
John Ruskin
Image
What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do
John Ruskin
Image
Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
John Ruskin
Image
Work first, and then rest.
John Ruskin
Image
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
John Ruskin
Image
Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.
John Ruskin
Image
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
John Ruskin
Image
Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.
John Ruskin
Image
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.
John Ruskin
Image
It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
John Ruskin
Image
The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.
John Ruskin
Image
Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
John Ruskin
Image
My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
John Ruskin
Image
There is no wealth but life.
John Ruskin